Conor McGregor’s career is over.
Sure, the brash Irishman will continue to scuttle around the MMA and entertainment world, but his time as a fighter, and more importantly, a top draw in the sport is done. The narrative of the career of the former Featherweight champion isn’t anything new, he was a talented athlete that allowed fame and fortune to ruin his career and tarnish his legacy, but it’s still a fascinating case of self-destruction within the span of less than a decade.
The latest blunder for McGregor is a prime example of how massive wealth, as much as it can make life rather carefree, comes with an almost equally massive amount of responsibility.
After he racked in more than $100 million to fight Floyd Mayweather in 2017 in a circus, albeit a very lucrative circus, of a boxing match, the entertaining striker hasn’t been anywhere near as sharp in the octagon as he was previously.
In short, Conor has made more headlines, for al the wrong reasons, outside of the cage than anything he did in the UFC. After filming a season of The Ultimate Fighter with the notion that he would fight fellow coach, Michael Chandler at the conclusion of the series in 2023, McGregor never enrolled in the UFC testing pool, which made him ineligible to compete.
Despite enrolling in the program last year, an indication that he might actually make his return to MMA, it was announced last week that McGregor was suspended for 18 months because he didn’t inform the anti-doping agency of where he was, a requirement of the program, and thus missed a test on three different occasions, prompting the suspension to be enforced from the time that he missed the third test, which wouldn’t make him eligible to fight again until at least March of 2026.
Keep in mind, none of this is a new protocol and it’s a standard of the anti-doping policy, as it allows for random testing to maintain the integrity of the program. For Conor to conveniently not tell the agency where he was, he was able to avoid taking the test, which implies, at least in my view, that he has something to hide from the anti-doping agency.
I say this because he had more than ample notice to enroll in the program during the course of the Ultimate Fighter season, but wasn’t on the roster to even be given a test and then after he enrolled in the testing pool to make him available for random testing, he was no where to be found.
Remember, the last time we saw the former UFC champion in the octagon, he suffered a gruesome injury at the end of the first round of a rematch against Dustin Poirier in July 2021, snapping his leg before the contest was halted. Infamously, Anderson Silva suffered the same injury when he threw a kick during a rematch with Chris Weidman in late-2013. Silva, arguably the most dominate champion in UFC history during his prime, was on the sidelines for more than a year. When he returned to the cage to beat Nick Diaz via unanimous decision in January of 2015, he failed a drug test for steroids so the fight was overturned to a no contest. After the Diaz bout, Silva had a 1-5 record before he retired from the sport.
The biggest takeaways from this scenario is that steroids can be used to attempt to comeback as strong as possible given the nature of the serious injury, and considering that Silva had the exact same injury and eventually tested positive for steroids, it certainly creates a level of suspicion as to why Conor McGregor has avoided taking a drug test since his injury four years ago.
Again, taking everything into account between dodging the testing pool in 2023 and avoiding the test when he was in the testing pool in 2024, I think it’s fair to say that McGregor has something to hide.
However, he has faced bigger problems outside of the sport that might be even more damaging to his career.than the suspension that will keep him away from the octagon until at least 2026.
McGregor has a laundry list of physical assaults, sexual assaults, and arrests. That sets a precedent of this type of behavior, but it was still shocking when he was accused of a violent rape that was alleged to have taken place in 2018. In 2024, after it was determined that there wasn’t enough evidence for a criminal trail, the woman that accused McGregor won a civil case against him where he was found to be responsible for the rape by a jury. He attempted to appeal the case, but it was eventually denied.
The negative publicity did major damage to his public image in his native Ireland and he lost several endorsement deals as a result. Not surprisingly, it didn’t do much harm to his value as a fighter in the United States, as the news went unnoticed by most causal MMA fans, and truth be told, for the general public, it was somewhat of an “out of sight, out of mind” situation for him.
Prior to the announcement of the suspension, McGregor claimed that he wanted to fight on the White House card next June for Trump’s birthday, which was probably a way for him to attempt to grab some headlines. While he has a fondness for Trump, sharing similar political views with the orange felon, and actually visited the White House this past March, it’s doubtful that he will realistically compete at the event. The UFC already catered to McGregor when they shoehorned him into the position of being a double champion and more or less got burned for their efforts when he took that promotional hype to the previously mentioned boxing match against Floyd for $100 million.
I wouldn’t be totally shocked if Dana White bends the rules for Conor to get onto the White House card, but would it really be worth the hassle? There will be several other fighters at the event that will praise Trump and that’s basically the entire point of the production.
As silly as this might’ve sounded ten years ago, the UFC doesn’t need Conor McGregor or his baggage anymore.
It’s a rather easy decision for the UFC because the reason to have Conor McGregor on the roster and thus tolerate his nonsense no longer exist. The new Paramount deal, which will bring subscribers the pay-per-view events for the much lower price of $7.99 a month as opposed to the current $79.99 per events, makes it exponentially easier for the company to get fans to invest into the product through the Paramount subscription. Basically, they need pay-per-views that are worth $8 in perceived market value, not $80 so they don’t need a major headliner nearly as often going forward as they did before this new contract.
In theory, this should allow more exposure for more fighters to hopefully rebuild a mostly unknown and diluted roster. Assuming that happens, new stars will be made, and even if they aren’t on the level of McGregor at his peak, there are enough talented fighters that just need the promotional push to be in the position to have enough cache to headline pay-per-views. When new stars are made, they makes McGregor’s involvement less necessary since there really isn’t a spot for him in the organization.
McGregor dodging the test and putting himself on the sidelines for at least another six months prevents any hype around him or potential match-ups from being on the horizon. Between the suspension and the negative publicity, it’s difficult to expect McGregor as a priority for the company to promote in the future. All things considered, I’d be very surprised if he ever fights again, and if he does, it probably won’t be in top form, as unfortunately, we’ve seen this type of fall from grace in sports before. It’s a rather odd situation, as Conor McGregor was the top star in the UFC and one of the biggest stars in the history of the sport, but it was for a relatively short time and his impact on mixed martial arts declined almost as fast as his initial surge in popularity several years ago.
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Until next week
-Jim LaMotta
Email [email protected] | You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, & Threads @jimlamotta89
